I find it hard to understand how someone had a cabinet level political position for a number of years, and ‘this’ only became common knowledge long after leaving office. If ‘this’ is some sort of political smear campaign and Harman is essentially innocent of the accusations against her, it seems very late. If ‘this’ is real, why did no newspaper find out before now?

They’ve only recently started reading (or should that be ‘raiding’) the Internet to fill their columns – it had been around for years in the Blogosphere, but that was when they had journalists out looking for proper stories.

PIE didn’t get disbanded until about ’83 or so. Then the leaders of it got prosecuted but only for disseminating porn I think, not for any actual underage activity, but back then it was still 21 for boys so the courts would have been overflowing…..

IIRC, that was another tabloid (Daily Mail? Sun?) panic centred around sex education materials, primarily a book depicting children living with a gay couple called something like Jane Lives With Eric And Bernard, or whatever.

Which of course ironically is nowadays official government policy, and adoption agencies who didn’t want to place Jane with Eric and Bernard had to shut down or be prosecuted.

I think the Daily Mail are probably just twisting the facts to make a story. I read about this on the internet somewhere last year and it’s taken them till now to try and create drama, and stir up ‘outrage’ about it? I don’t see anything wrong with the explanation Harriet Harman has given (apart from the bit at the end about girls in bikinis I think was a bit silly and not very relevant). The interviewer was very aggressive I thought and just trying to push her into saying something or coming out with a statement that they could make another headline.

And why all this trying to drum up hysteria over something that happened back in 1976? It’s all long since water under the bridge by now, they’ve moved from it, learnt from it. This is nonsense and I agree with Sam (if i’ve picked him up correctly) – the interviewer probably does need a slap….

‘And why all this trying to drum up hysteria over something that happened back in 1976?’ You may not have noticed but a number of men have been or are being prosecuted in our courts for something(s) that happened in the seventies. The hysteria is already drummed up to full volume.

Re: “You may not have noticed but a number of men have been or are being prosecuted in our courts for something(s) that happened in the seventies. The hysteria is already drummed up to full volume”

I know, but this is just an attempt to add to it, and the reason I think it’s ridiculous is that *yes* the paedophile information exchange was briefly allowed to join the National council for civil liberties but that’s the kind of group the ‘National council for civil liberties’ was, they let anyone join, it doesn’t mean that they *agreed* with the proposals of *everyone* who joined that wasn’t the point. The paedophile information exchange didn’t *get anywhere* with their proposals did they? The age of consent was never even lowered (let alone to the age of 10) was it? So basically they were allowed freedom of speech, or to voice their opinions, but ultimately no one else (or very few people) agreed with them so they got nowhere and those that broke the law within that group were punished, which has nothing to do with Harriet Harman or the National council for civil liberties, because it wasn’t them who gave them leave or encouraged them to break the law. Allowing them to join the National council for civil liberties, doesn’t mean that the National council for civil liberties endorsed their views at all. You can disagree with what someone says, but let them voice their opinions and let people form their own views about it.

Also at this time although the paedophile information exchange was proposing things that were at that time illegal (and if they broke the law they’d be punished), it probably wasn’t known to the National council for civil liberties at this stage just what a *bad* group they were, if a lot of their criminal activities had not come to light yet, so they probably thought that their arguments were all just *hypothetical* at that point and not actually being carried out and I don’t think their was the sort of ‘paedo hysteria’ you get today around back then so people wouldn’t have felt the need to get quite so hysterically ‘outraged’ by this group being allowed to join in 1976 as they most certainly would today and that’s probably why not much if an issue was made of it at the time – hind sights 20/20. But the paedophile information exchange NEVER achieved any of their wishes Harriet Harman didn’t actually agree with their proposals – so there’s (imo) been no harm done here, the past is the past, we move on and sometimes learn from it….

@Lucozade * it probably wasn’t known to the National council for civil liberties at this stage just what a *bad* group they were, *

You’re comparing apples with plums m’dear. The Hard Left didn’t do morals; there was no bad, like there was no good; there was just Equality of Power. They knew exactly what was being proposed, but they disagreed with it for completely different reasons to everyone else.http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-NSIFg-c9EpU/UuwFUnvtHvI/AAAAAAAADrE/v2xgmcKGiRI/s1600/image002.jpg It doesn’t take a huge imagination to see how this political way of thinking, rather than moral way, leads you into the blind alleys that all women are abused because only men have “power”.

@Lucozade I wonder if perhaps they got along fine with their parents until they entered puberty. It certainly breaks down that stereotype of Liberace and his mother though – a stereotype that I have no doubt influenced Fleet Street back then with regard to Jimmy and the Duchess……

You seem very anxious to put this in the past. It’s nowhere near “past”.

The PIE did not disband, if anything, it grew and became more influentia (albeit covertly). It has been operating since the 70’s and still operates today. These paedophiles and paedophile-apologists got into high places in successive British government(s) which enabled them to carry on their practices protected by their positions and make policy to suit their agenda that compromised all British children via the educational agenda certainly – but particularly thousands of vulnerable children in government-run care homes – government-run by paedophiles, that is – who had unfettered access to them all these and destroyed many, many lives.

Since the 70’s over the years several publications have attempted to expose this state of affairs, as did one brave MP in Parliament in the 90s – Geoffrey Dickens MP – who was ridiculed and hounded by his fellow-MPs for doing so. Geoffrey Dickens died suddenly and inexplicably in 1995 at the age of 63. And, once again, so did “the story”.

Harriet Harman, legal officer of the NCCL, wrote legal papers for PIE, a group advocating sex with children as young as 4 years old, arguing on their behalf that this should become law. These papers, written and signed by her, buried deep in the national archives, have been dug out and posted this week all over twitter this week for all the world to see. This is not a “smear campaign” – it is fact – and this time “the story” is not going to go away.

Re: “I wonder if perhaps they got along fine with their parents until they entered puberty”

Well it just depends who your parents are, some are lucky to have good parents who want or (actually know) what’s best for them – but there are other poor souls that unfortunately don’t have that luxury….

@Liz727 That is an accusation that strikes a chord with me. I have asked myself what the purpose is of imprisoning so many old people (not just celebrities). HUNDREDS of elderly people have been jailed in recent years on the basis of “historical allegations” – folk of an age that makes them long past being a conceivable risk to anyone nowadays. I’ve thought that fining them, tagging them, giving them an ASBO, putting them under house arrest could be a suitable punishment, but I’m baffled why they’re being put in a prison if there is no abuse risk nowadays.

Even if you take the deterrent aspect – if it’s a terrible error of the past, what need is there of deterrent? Who is being detrred if nobody is doing it in the 21st Century?

Have these present-day paedophiles been reported to the police? Are today’s victims being listened to? We need more information.

Lucozade, You may be right about the hysteria being drummed up over something that happened in the 1970s, but surely it is not wrong to drum up a bit (or a lot) of hysteria over something that has been known of for a long time but resolutely covered up by the political establishment (of all parties, they all knew). Let’s put the buggers on the rack for that at least, even though there is no suggestion Hewitt, Harman and Dromey were actively involved in anything criminal. The three were known to be ideologues who lack judgement on ethical matters and yet two of them were given senior ministerial posts.

This has been known about for years. It’s just that it’s risen to the surface again. And the irony of Harman being head of the NCCL, given the wholesale assault her party launched on civil liberty when in power, should not be lost on us.

That PIE briefly joined the NCCL has been known for years. So much so regrettable, part of the whole sexual experimentation of the era which now seems unbelievable only because we live in an age of a strange Puritanism which manages to live alongside on-demand hardcore pornography streamed straight to the digital device of anyone who wants it. But I find the rest of the Mail’s gleeful attempts to paint the Labour politicians as paedos’ mates unconvincing. I couldn’t even see the documents said what they thought they did, although they are so badly worded it was quite hard to tell. I think it’s just an attempt to even the score up after all the talk of high ranking Tories on non existent Elm House ‘guest lists’.

Perhaps the pop industry would like to do something similar, and name a few classical pianists with rentboy friends?

As I understand it, PIE was already affiliated to the NCCL when Harman took up her job in 1978, and remained affiliated until a year after Harman left – that adds up to a minimum of 5 years – that’s not what I would call ‘briefly’ joined the NCCL. I’d call that a well-established affiliation, one which Harman did nothing to change during her tenure, neither did her creepy husband, Dromey, who had been there longer. Perhaps Harman’s two days of public ‘noise’ are aimed at providing cover for those with records even more difficult to defend than her own ?

I cannot stand Harriet Harman, Dromey, Hewitt, or most of the rest of their type. But this whole thing is ridiculous, and basically another attempt to concoct a conspiracy theory. Which, it being Dacre and the Daily Mail and all, is hardly surprising, of course.

Eh? I think the Mail is at least talking verifiable facts, which is more than the leftie-driven media was doing about Thatcher’s Cabinet and Ted Heath etc. That the country’s journalists have become so moronic as to be pointing and shouting “paedo” at one another across the kitchen tabloid says most about them.

It’s apparent that the politicians in power just now, are completely ignoring all this horseshit.

First, she said that NCCL had 1000 affiliates and that anyone who paid a sub could affiliate which suggests that an undesirable affiliate could slip through the net and yet there was no way of filtering out such undesirables. These two statements contradict one another. ‘Paedophile’ is, in any case, a hard word to lose even among thousands of affiliates.

Second, she conceded that she had written a report promoting the distribution of images of children as young as ten unless evidence was produced showing that the child had not consented. That’s a very tricky bit of evidence to find and who would undertake the task of producing it anyway. It looks like an endorsement of wrong ‘uns to me with a top-dressing of pettifogging hypocrisy so that child-protection isn’t cast to the four winds.

Yes, it was all a long time ago, different standards, blah blah blah but one must not lose sight of who precisely is in the vanguard of the new puritanism.

Of course she was promoting the distribution of images among people who had no personal knowledge of the subject of those images.

She wasn’t presenting a report to parliament arguing that Mrs o’Zade should be allowed to send pictures of little Luc to your auntie. That kind of thing only became an issue later when the plod gave Julia Somerville grief after Boots processed her photos of her own children in the bath and set off the paedo alarm.

There’s a distinction, I grant you, between ‘libertinage d’esprit‘ and ‘libertinage de moeurs‘ and I can well imagine that the NCCL people were guilty only of pushing the envelope of social tolerance to an extreme which they themselves failed properly to understand but which was unremittingly rebarbative.

But consider how prescriptive, hectoring and omnipresent these same people are today, prepared to lecture all comers on all aspects of everything all the time and how completely lacking in remorse for their own past misguided and ill-conceived connivance at PIE.

Re: “But consider how prescriptive, hectoring and omnipresent these same people are today, prepared to lecture all comers on all aspects of everything all the time and how completely lacking in remorse for their own past misguided and ill-conceived connivance at PIE”

Yes, if it was anyone else she’d have a field day – she must have a short memory….

Re: “I think you may have identified the point where perverse obtuseness meets arrant stupidity!”

Well there naked pictures of children that didn’t consent and that’s what the interviewer was talking about. I didn’t think they had to be suggestive in any way to be considered ‘indecent’ these days….

Difficult to have any sympathy for the hectoring Harman or her comrades. I do recall the seventies being a bit wild, but sex with children definitely wasn’t acceptable, which would suggest that the affiliation of PIE to NCCL happened through utter incompetence or infiltration. I just don’t buy the 1000 affiliates excuse because those were still the days of paperwork, which staff at NCCL would have had to read and process for each application. The Mail may well be making a meal of it, but what richly deserving victims, and wouldn’t you pay to turn the screw? A simple apology would have gone a long way to shut this down; no-one’s seriously suggesting personal involvement with PIE. A bit late now.

I bet one could read the 1975 NCCL Annual Report and be amazed at the number of things that they campaigned for that were regarded at the time as extreme, and are now regarded as perfectly normal. For example, in the Mail story above, read all of the section about ‘Gay Rights’. With the exception of the bit in the red box, who but an old Tory would publicly take issue with it? Even UKIP have an LGBT group for pities sake.

Funny to see The Mail lauding Chakrabati at the end of all of that………….

Liberty…. who have nothing to say about the treatment of most of the real Yewtree victims, the one’s on endless police bail (a tactic first tested on journalists during Hackgate) as endless Trawling for accusations takes place, and also now seemingly endless prosecutions by the Crown authorities.

As a faggot, I’m aware of the history of section / clause 28 in the UK and it’s impact (or not) on the LBGT movement, the book you are struggling (but not succeeding in naming) was “Jenny lives with Eric and Martin”. Although quite how it caused shock and scandal, I will never understand – what were we meant to do? Go back in the closet?

As a faggot, you’ll probably then remember that the mere mention of the word “bender” or its ilk was enough to throw the Sun readership into paroxysms of moral outrage at the time.

I remember Clause 28 very well because I was doing a show with Ian McKellen at the height of it, and he was one of the main voices in the movement against it. I remember at least one of the marches forming up outside our theatre before it set off.

McKellen got his gong from Maggie list in the same Honours round as Sir Jimmy.

I’ve got an old magazine where the copy headlines about “schoolgirls” said to be swooning at the sight of sex symbol Ian McKellen going nude in some Shakesperean romp in the theatre at the time, the girls being taken there on an educational outing. Hiding in plain sight perhaps…..

@John Galt Just reminded myself that I blogged the cutting. Here’s the image anyhow. Not quite as I portrayed it, but that’s memory for you… http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-wQz0pr7XaTo/UmQfU6nMjqI/AAAAAAAADQI/IqDc7S9H4Zc/s1600/image002.jpg Sir Ian is only referred to as “heartthrob of schoolgirls” – no mention of “swooning”. It’s in a tiny piece I spotted once that also records how Sir Jimmy attempted his own anti-streaking campaign but was thwarted by a 3 year-old……

It is an old story but comical to hear them arguing it was a different time, not considered an excuse now is it? The big scandal was the PIE men who were running children’s homes and claims of abuse were ignored for fear of offending gay men. Even now an adult lawyer was smeared when he bought up what had happened to him. That was a far bigger offence than the odious Harmen and friends, would have been wiser just to say sorry it was a mistake.

A bit off topic here, but I was just thinking about how strange it is that Travis is being prosecuted AGAIN over charges that seem totally trivial. Even if 100% true they barely rise to the level of criminality, and yet with this and the Roache, LeVell allegations, etc. the CPS seems perplexed at criticism from the commentariat and says it is just dealing with these celebrity cases the same way it deals with any other case.

Maybe this is true and maybe the the quality of prosecution cases has always been abysmally low, but perhaps exposure over recent years to televised show trials from the US like OJ Simpson, and several from Florida like Zimmerman and Stacey Anthony has greatly educated the public and made people much more court-literate, so expectations have greatly changed and people are asking questions like why the Roache case ever came to court, which would not have happened earlier when court proceedings were shrouded in mystery and occurred behind a thick fog filtered by the News of the World.

Mad Hattie’s Wikiquotes page seems to have been tidied up, or should that be ‘cleaned up’.

There are no longer quotes containing the terms: ‘men’ and ‘fathers’, in conjunction with families. I’m sure she made many quotes about men and fathers in the family, but the magic of digital media in cahoots with those nice Grubberment shills, at Google, seem to allow the global covering up of all that smells Fabian bad.

I first heard about the PIE/NCCL link years ago in a little booklet written by Lynette Burrows called “Fight for the family” she also made links to another bunch of “Childrens rights” people, Peter Newell and Rachel Hodgkin I think, involved in all that anti smacking hogwash that went on 20ish years ago, worth digging out and reading. Cheers Anna, stay well hope for a full recovery!!!!

The interviewer wasn’t even born when all this was going on. Couldn’t they come up with someone a little more seasoned, at least? More attempts by the MSM to squeeze the last drop out of this, looks like to me. Nothing like shutting the barn door after the horse has gone over the hill, lived a long life and died. Blimey, can we move on please??

Back in 2010, the same Fiona Scott Johnston had been on Voy Forums, and as suggested by the tone of the Friends Reunited post, she seemed to have genial memories of her old school. On a Post dated 17th March 2010, amongst others comments Fiona Scott Johnston writes,

“I also remember many other staff and have stayed in contact with staff from both Duncroft and Norman Lodge. I am sorry that Duncroft does not exist anymore but then we all grow old!!….. I hope things are going well for you and all ex-girls of this one time unique place.”

Can Fiona Scott Johnston be the same Fiona as the one who quoted by the Daily Star, speaking of sexual assault? In my enquiries on the web, at first I made a mistake and suddenly noticed how very important is the right spelling.

As far as I understand them, the outstanding charges against Travis ARE trivial. At least that’s how I regard them, and as a woman in the bloom of youth in the 70s and early 80s I was subjected to similar, and dealt with it in my own inimitable way. Ye gods, I could put half the older males of a small Midlands town behind bars if I chose. I don’t, and I can’t understand those who have. It’s a matter of both self respect and proportionality.

Sorry I’m the cow’s tail again. So interesting to see that H Harperson is in the s***. I am so upset…..not! Strange how Milleband did his union shucking around this time too with plenty clappy of footage on TV. That interviewer on the video clip is so ‘A HANDBAG’ it is almost laughable. Is this next election becoming one of the muck raking ones of the last century? HH should have apologised speedily and grovelled mightily to quiet things down. Funny how electronic records get pulled when people who disagree with a point of view start delving into them aint it? Paperwork sits there waiting to be researched by investigative journos looking for smut, they then neglect to do the same keen perusal re Saville. Then pointedly ignore those who do the research that they neglected in favour of believing lies and deceit. Very depressing. Hope your stay in England has been a sunny dry one and helped your recovery.